How Important is Recycling the Old Mattresses in Your House?

Mattresses are often dumped in landfills and that can have serious adverse environmental effects. Not only do these mattresses take more than 20 cubic feet each, but they also are not something that would compress or decompose any sooner. In fact, it can take decades for a mattress to get complete decomposed. A huge part of over 20 million of mattresses in U.S. is dumped in open landfills. We can’t even imagine how much and what all we can save by recycling these mattresses. Managing and creating mattresses is an expensive affair, and they always chew off a huge portion of money of the taxpayers in the country. The life of various landfills can be extended by many more years if we consider green mattresses or mattress recycling.

Importance of Recycling

Dumping the not-in-use mattresses in various landfills can pose a serious threat to our environment. The chemicals in these mattresses are flame retardant in nature and can easily out in the soil, water and air. The chemicals are dangerous enough to cause neurobehavioral changes and damage to the immune system in our bodies. They also contain VOCs or volatile organic compounds that act like an irritant for our respiratory systems and few other vital body parts.

These are some of the top reasons why it is important to recycle our mattresses that are no more in use. Many items in the mattresses like foam, cotton, metal, wood etc can be easy recycled into something important and useful. The cotton and clothes in mattress can be recycled into rugs and clothes and wood found these can be cut into many wood pieces. Similarly, even metal parts and foam can be recycled for many purposes.

How to Recycle the Mattresses?

Let us now take a look at some of the common ways of recycling mattresses. If you think your current mattress is in a pretty good condition but you still want to purchase a new one consider not to dump it anywhere, but donate it. Advertise your donation through websites like Freecycle.org and Craigslist.com. If you are planning to give it to a charity, you may have to check their guidelines as there are few laws in place to be followed before giving away your mattresses to a charity. This is mainly due hygienic and sanitary reasons.

Today, you don’t really have to struggle to find a good recycling centre for your mattress. Of course, earlier it took a bit of an effort on your part as the number of recycling centre was much less but today things have changed. A website like Earth911.com can help you in finding one of the mattress recycling centers in your region.

On the website, you have to fill in some information to get the desired result. Feed in the name of the item that you want to recycle then mention your city, zip code, state etc. After performing the search, you can see various centers, their contact details and addresses. These people can either pick your old mattress from your place or you may have to deliver them to the centre.

No matter how you decide to do away with your old mattress, make it a point to recycle it, and not to dump it simply!